The present disclosure generally relates to vehicle air intake systems, and more particularly relates to an air separating intake scoop for an air intake system on a vehicle.
Air intake systems provide necessary air to internal combustion engines to aid in the combustion process. Conventional intake systems either draw air from inside the engine compartment or they draw air from outside the vehicle via an exterior intake port. Systems designed where the air is drawn from the inside of the engine compartment commonly suffer a drawback of drawing in warmer and less dense air than exterior air. This can reduce the efficiency of the engine compared with the use of cooler exterior air. A solution to address the shortcoming of these systems is to draw in cooler exterior air.
In particular, it is advantageous to fuel economy and torque to have cold air going into the engine's air intake as opposed to hot air from around the engine in the engine compartment. Often for this reason, numerous systems have been used to get cold air from outside the vehicle while blocking the hot air from the engine room. One such system employs an air scoop to direct fresh air toward the engine's air intake system. Unfortunately, a problem associated with known air intake scoops is that water or particles (e.g., snow) can be directed to the engine's intake by the scoop along with fresh air. This can result in numerous problems, such as blockage the engine intake, inhibition of airflow and/or damage to the engine.